Monday, December 29, 2014

The second age of imperialism

As we enter
2015, it is not useless to look backwards in order to try to guess the trends
of the future. I would argue that the
age that we are, to some extent exiting now, and which extended from the early
1980s, can be called the “second age of imperialism”--the first one, in the
modern history, having been the age of high imperialism 1870-1914.

I will focus here on some of its key
manifestations in the ideological sphere, in the areas I know, history and economics.
But it should be obvious that ideology is but a manifestation of the underlying
real forces, which were twofold: (i) the failure of most developing countries
by 1980 to become economically successful and self-sustaining after
decolonization and the end of Communism as an alternative global ideology, and
(ii) the relatively solid economic record of Western countries (masked by the
expansion of borrowing for the lower classes), and regained self-confidence of
the elites in the wake of the Reagan-Thatcher (counter-) revolutions and the fall
of Communism. The violent manifestations
of the second age of imperialism were invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, brutal
war in Libya, and the defensive imperialism of Russia in Ukraine and Georgia. But
here we are concerned with the superstructure.

In history, the paradigmatic example
of the ideological change is the explanation for the outbreak of World War I.
This is the most significant event since the French revolution, and thus represents
an ideological litmus test for how different epochs and historians see it. The
standard explanation, started by the left-wing writers and politicians like
Hobson, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Hilferding, and reaching its full form in the
work of Fritz Fischer in the late 1960s, was that it was an almost inevitable conflict
driven by the struggles of national bourgeoisies as to how the world would be
carved up. It was domestic class conflict plus the need for local bourgeoisies
to expand production in order to stave off declining rate of profit that
produced the clash between the old imperialists (the Western Allies and Russia)
and the aspiring ones (Germany and Austria-Hungary).

Now consider the new books published
recently, and especially in 2014 on the occasion of the centenary of the Great
War. I wrote here about one of them, Niall Ferguson’s “Pity of War”, written 10
years ago, but which I think is the best among the “revisionist” literature. The
remarkable feature of these books is that they are unable to offer any theory
as to why the War happened at all. In lieu of imperialism, they propose a series
of useless contingencies: one minister failed to reply to the telegraph, another
was travelling in the North Sea, a politician went on vacation. The title of Christopher
Clark’s book “The sleepwalkers” says it all: just if a few good men paid more
attention. The explanations represent the ultimate in nothingness: they support
neither a theory of great men, nor of great ideas, nor of social forces. It is
a puerile “theory” of trivial events piled upon each other which is offered as
the explanation for the most momentous event in the past two centuries. It represents
the bankruptcy of alternative or “revisionist” theories to engage with the fact
of the War.

In social sciences, the celebration
of ahistorical “neo-imperialism” took its key shape in Francis Fukuyama’s “End
of history”, which of course should not be understood as the end of conflict,
but as humanity having reached a terminus in finding the most appropriate form
of social organization: liberal capitalism. “The end of history”, in turn, justified
(whether its author would have approvedor not) the military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya where
this final form of human organization were to be imposed on the heathens. When
this became too difficult or costly, the “Fukuyamistas” withdraw, perhaps to regroup
before trying again.

In economics, the second age of imperialism
was best reflected in many doctrines and concepts that became discredited during
the Great Recession (efficient markets, rational expectations, costless transactions,
representative agent, “trickle-down” economics), but even more so in theWashington consensus. While the Washington consensus,
the list of ten desirable economic policies to be implemented in the Third
World, drawn by John Williamson and reflecting the views of the Washington establishment,
had valuable insights, it provided a template for mindless imposition of policies
that often, within the context of countries that were forced to implement them,
were counterproductive. The Washington consensus was a perfect complement to
Fukuyama’s “end of history” because it offered the ultimate economic policies to
go together with Fukuyama’s ultimate political organization.

It is a great virtue, if one could
say so, of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson to have combined these two strands
of neo-imperialist thought, into their institutional approach. The so-called
inclusive institutions are just what your get when you put Fukuyama and the Washington
consensus together. So, in Acemoglu and Robinson, on the one hand, and Niall
Ferguson on the other, we have the perfect, and I would venture to say, the
final intellectual products of the second age of imperialism.

But how will things move henceforth?
The second age of imperialism was a splendid
construct that has however stumbled on several obstacles. In the economics, it
was severely shaken by the Great Recession, and almost a decade of no growth in
Europe and Japan. Multi-decennial zero growth of median wages, that is, of the middle-class
which is so crucial for these theories to hold, was a further refutation of its
neo-imperialist “inclusiveness”. The unexpected success of China was another. No
matter how strongly Fukuyamistas and Acemoglu-Robinson (FAR) either deny that
China represents an example showing that different institutions can deliver an even
superior growth, or vociferously call for the inevitable end to the Chinese
miracle, the success of China stands singly as a great refutation of the FAR
view of economics and politics.

Domestically, more than 30 years of the
second age of imperialism have brought first,
segmentation of the populations into the very rich, and the middle class, most
of whom have zero net wealth and stagnant wages, and second, discrediting of the
traditional center-left, center-right politics. Both outcomes are sharply at odds with what
FAR expected: under liberal capitalism neither has the middle class grown, nor have
institutions of the liberal political order been affirmed in daily actions, as
John Rawls required of any self-sustaining political system. This has led to
the rise of “heterodox” parties of the left and the right, and the real threats
to democracy by populism, xenophobia and plutocracy.

Neo-imperialist international balance-sheet
is even worse. It has produced unnecessary and, apparently, endless wars, tribalization
of nation-states, the rise of violent and most retrograde forms of religious
intolerance, all of that having been, at the origin, justified by “the end of history“
and the nebulous doctrine of “the right to protect” which togerher played the
same role as the ideology of the European “civilization” of other continents did
in the late 19th century. The latter gave us King Leopold and the
Congo; the former, George W. Bush and ISIS. The second age of imperialism leaves
the world in the year 2014, in a state, in many ways reminiscent of the one in
1914, and in a turmoil that may produce either another religious One Hundred Year
war or World War III…or both.